Claiming the Union
Claiming the Union: Citizenship in the Post-Civil War South, published by Cambridge University Press in 2014, examines southerners’ claims to loyal citizenship in the reunited nation after the American Civil War. Southerners – male and female; elite and non-elite; white, black, and Native American – disagreed with the federal government over the obligations citizens owed to their nation and the obligations the nation owed to its citizens. This book explores these clashes through the operations of the Southern Claims Commission, a federal body that rewarded compensation for wartime losses to southerners who proved that they had been loyal citizens of the Union. The book argues that southerners forced the federal government to consider how white men who had not been soldiers and voters, and women and racial minorities who had not been allowed to serve in those capacities, could also qualify as loyal citizens. Postwar considerations of the former Confederacy potentially demanded a reconceptualization of citizenship that replaced exclusions by race and gender with inclusions according to loyalty.
Freedom! A Promise Disrupted: North Carolina, 1862-1901
Following the Civil War, African American citizens pushed for radical reconstruction that would guarantee them more rights and protections under the law. This was followed by heavy and violent white backlash. “After the Civil War, African Americans in North Carolina helped to rebuild the nation on a new foundation, one that for a brief moment hoped to fulfill to the promise of liberty for all,” said Susanna Lee, exhibit curator and Associate Professor at North Carolina State University. The exhibit combines text, photographs, artwork, and artifacts.
